


A Stash of Powders, Paints, and Pretty Things

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Fanfic of Fanfic, Jay WEARS MAKEUP, M/M, Part of 'Left Behind as Static' Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:12:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1886346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay has a secret. And it's perhaps the most innocent secret he's had since getting involved with Timothy W.</p>
<p>(A fanfiction of another fanfiction, known as Left Behind as Static by mistresspiece.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stash of Powders, Paints, and Pretty Things

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Left Behind as Static](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075427) by [mistresspiece](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresspiece/pseuds/mistresspiece). 



> Trigger warning for passing mention of selfharm.

Smooth black lines trail beneath forcibly widened eyes, the sea blue irises twitching in resistance against their owner’s attempt to focus. 

Jay has managed to keep his hand steady so far, and therefore he’s yet to stab his eye out, but he was never really known for his grace and elegance in the past. Still, maybe if he’s very, very careful…

“Jay?”

And of course, he jinxes himself. The sudden prod isn’t as painful as it is surprising; is this what cats waving around their puffed up tails feel like? He nearly howls, clapping a hand to the assaulted eye and blinking rapidly.

“What?!” he cries out, all thoughts of discretion and secretive behavior forgotten. He practically hears Brian flinch away from the other side of the door and for a second, Jay pities him, just a little; his best friend’s boyfriend with a history of unhealthy behavior is screaming at him.

But that doesn’t last long at all. Panic overwhelms him, and he makes to lock the bathroom door, as he’d forgotten to in the first place. Good job, past Jay.

“I just, you’ve been up here a while is all, I wanted to check on you,” Brian explains, speaking in that aggravatingly ‘I’m innocent here I just want to help out’ tone of his. “I was worried.”

Too much. He can’t stay mad at Brian when he’s… /Brian/. Jay props the palms of his hands against the tightly shut bathroom door and ducks his head, evening his breathing out one second at a time. One, two, one, two, in and out.

“I’m fine, Brian,” Jay assures him, shaking his head. He presses the ceiling of his skull to the door, hoping to ease the pounding within. “I needed some time alone is all.”

“…you promise?”

Holy shit, could Brian sound any more pitiful? Jay straightens up and closes his eyes, counting his breaths again. One, two, three, one, two, three. 

He grips the doorknob and twists it, slowly inching the door open. On the other side is a rather distraught Brian, his stupidly big brown eyes even more stupidly big. Jay hides his made-up eye, angling his head against the door to cover up the left side of his face. At least he was lucky enough to have not started on the other eye before Brian decided to get nosey. 

“See, I’m okay,” Jay insists, knuckles blanching around the doorknob. “I just got stuck reading in the tub and I got too into the book is all.”

Brian blinks his long lashes at him, eyebrows knitting together. Hopefully there isn’t /too/ much blood pooling in Jay’s cheeks.

“Uh, but, Jay, I didn’t hear the pipes clanging around when you went up here.”

“Huh, must’ve been drowned out by your music,” Jay shrugs off, glancing towards Brian’s open bedroom door. Indeed, even now a faint hum is radiating from within, speakers turned down but not quite low enough to soften the bass of whatever classic rock Brian’s hooked onto now.

“I-- maybe? I wasn’t playing all that loud,” Brian says-- and it takes way too much effort to keep Jay from accidentally blowing out his own brain with the force of the snort trying to fight its way out of him. He shakes his head and closes the door again, locking it for good measure this time.

“Text Tim and ask him how he feels about that statement, that’s all I’m gonna tell you.”

Brian fails to reply to that, though Jay knows that he’s still there, seeing as he has yet to hear the slap-slap-slap of his sandals walking away.

After a moment of strained silence, Jay’s ear to the door, he picks up on the sound of Brian’s phone beeping away, as it does while he’s texting. This time Jay allows himself to laugh, both out of relief and just… Brian. Fucking Brian, sometimes.

Taking advantage of being alone again, Jay turns back to the mirror and examines the sloppy sweeping line he accidentally created when Brian came up and disturbed his work. His cheek now has several inky dots on it, and the perfect straight flourish he had going is all gone, smudged to hell and back.

Jay huffs and takes his fist to his eye, rubbing at it until there’s more cloudy black on his knuckle than on his face. What’s left is appealing enough, smoky or maybe even mysterious in darkening his eyes, but he isn’t satisfied just yet.

Eyeliner tube back in hand, he dips the skinny wand back inside, dunking it twice for a good thick amount of paint. Lifting it back to the crease of his eyelid, Jay gets back to work, moving steadily as he possibly can.

Maybe Brian interrupting wasn’t such an awful thing after all. 

(Not that he could ever properly thank him for this, but that’s neither here nor there.)

\--

There’s a knock at the front door, quick, short, three in a row. 

Instinct pulls Jay from the little nest he has formed on the bed, made up of all six cushy pillows that he and Tim share and several containers of colorful powders and paints. He makes it halfway across the bedroom before he catches a glimpse of his decorated eyelids in the circular mirror propped up on the wall by the door. 

Shit. 

He backs off and focuses on his reflection, rubbing at his pink glittery lips. Whatever luck he lacked earlier when Brian busted in on him in the bathroom must be back now; the recently applied gloss comes off easily onto the pads of his fingers. Soon the gloss is lining the inside of his sweatpants’ pocket, even with the tissues being right there across the room. 

Maybe he can leave the blush without arousing any suspicion, it’s light enough… or-- no, no, bad idea, no, he grinds the back of his hand into his glowing cheek, the friction turning the skin a darker shade of red. Shit, shit, shit. 

Whatever, whatever, Jay will pass it off on the heat, he’s pale and the heat likes to make it so everybody knows it when he’s overheated. It’s the eyes that are more important, most important really. 

The inky black lines falling off into a swish at the edge of his eye are utterly dry and they’re on /good/. He remembers the loopy golden text written into the eyeliner tube: “Waterproof! Lasts ALL Day! Gorgeous Factor through the ROOF!”

‘Gorgeousness’ doesn’t matter as much when he’s in a fucking panic and trying to hide his embarrassing secret habits from his boyfriend. Taking his fists to his eyes doesn’t take it all the way off, leaving the hollows of his eyes a deep charcoal and the sides of his fingers smeary and smoky. 

A second round of sharper, more irritable knocking startles him into running back to the bed, sweeping all of the tubes and compacts underneath his pillows. Something clatters around behind the bedframe and onto the floor but he’s going to have to retrieve it later (or more likely it will rot there for the rest of eternity with his memory being the way it is). 

Brian must’ve gotten the message and gone to let Tim into the house. He hears the squawk of the door hinges and Brian’s ever sunny greeting, along with a few choice complaints about how he’s so very busy attempting to make dinner for his friends but it’s okay if Jay couldn’t come answer the door, clearly he’s got some big things going on right now!

Jay gets it, Brian doesn’t like to be interrupted while he’s cooking. Still, he might have to kick him beneath the table at some point while they’re eating. Accidentally, of course.

The steps creak beneath Tim’s weight, whining each time he takes a step. Jay’s heart judders up into his throat, his hands trembling, legs crossing once he climbs back into bed. He grins wide as he can, like he’s been out playing with the wildlife around the house all day. Nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary.

Seconds later, the doorknob rustles and twists open, revealing a Tim that’s struggling to stand at full height and his shoulders folding into his torso. Tired as his dark eyes are though, he still manages a small smile for Jay in greeting.

“Might want to check your supper for dead rats tonight,” Tim advises before closing the door behind him. Jay shrugs, maintaining an innocently blank expression. 

“Anything to keep the pests out of our home.”

Tim crosses the room, stepping over Jay’s shut laptop and dropping onto the bed. A long exhale passes through him, and he pulls his knees to his chest, effectively shrinking him down as small as he can possibly go. Jay reaches over to run his fingers through Tim’s hair, stroking it from his eyes every time gravity wins the game and pulls his bangs back down.

“Capitalist society got you down, dear?” he teases, earning a tiny slap on the wrist. He laughs, as unnatural as the sound is to his ears. This, this is fine-- if Tim’s too tired to even sit up, then he doesn’t have to worry about being discovered. 

“At least capitalism took enough pity on me to employ me in the first place,” Tim mumbles back, stretching like a cat and shuddering beneath his hand. Another relieved exhale. He turns his head, arm slung over his forehead, eyebrows raised. “So what were you even doin’ in here? You’re just… sitting around with nothing out or anything.”

Was Jay stupid enough not to at least pretend and put his laptop on the bed? Was he, really? 

“I… was napping. I woke up when I heard you knocking.”

“Really,” Tim says, doubt weighing that single word down. Jay flinches at his tone, reaching to itch at the back of his head. Suddenly so itchy. 

“Yeah. S’why I didn’t answer when you were there and all.”

“Hm. Gonna look me in the eye and say that’s the God’s honest truth?” Tim prods on. No, no he can’t look him in the eye-- one, because it isn’t the holy fucking truth like he’s saying, and two, he’s already having difficulty hiding the black clouds rubbed onto his fingers. 

“Jay.”

All the levity that was in his voice seconds before is gone. The sitting man closes his eyes, breathes in deep. He knows that if he were anybody else, someone more stable or with less history of, y’know, slitting their damn wrists, Tim wouldn’t be this insistent. And he understands that; he would be this firm if he and Tim were forced to swap places in this situation.

Nonetheless: holding a secret is a near impossibility while in this house.

“It’s… not the truth,” Jay forces out of his clenching throat. The bed shifts and groans under Tim’s shifting. He has to resist flinching away, as hard as it is. “I hate lying to you.”

“So why’d you lie to me just now?”

This time, Jay does flinch. No accusation in those words; just a straight up question. It’s still enough to hurt.

“Jay. You can’t say you’re ‘not telling the truth’ to pretend you’re not lying. Now look at me, please. You’re worrying me.”

Jay can force himself to speak and he can admit it when he’s lying… sort of, but he can’t seem to twist his body to fulfill that request. Survival instinct has him frozen and staring into his lap, utterly still.

Tim’s harsh sigh signals the approach of his hand, and Jay lets him steer his head to the side so that they’re looking at each other head on, eye to eye. The realization is there in the widening of his eyes and the drop of his jaw. 

Pinpricks of heat at the back of his eyes make their way out in tears that threaten to drop if he blinks, so he keeps them open as long as he can bear, fighting through the burn.

“Jay, what the hell.”

Now he has to blink. He pulls away, slipping out of Tim’s grip so he can grind the heel of his palm into his eyes. 

“It’s nothing--”

“Bruises to /both eyes/ is hardly nothing,” Tim says fiercely. It’s been years since Tim manhandled him or tried to punch him out but Jay’s old instincts are crawling back at the sound of Tim’s anger. He shrinks into himself, legs crossed on the bed with his body bent double and his hands over his neck.

“Bruises--”

“They’re not bruises!” Jay hisses through grit teeth, and for all of ten seconds, they are both silent, Tim’s eyes burning into his back, Jay losing himself in the dark behind his eyelids. 

Then there’s a clatter behind him, followed by the sound of plastic rolling along the wooden floor. 

Tim is off and walking around the bed before Jay has the chance to go diving for the fallen whatever-has-gone-down. The man gets to his knees, paws around blindly, then sits back up just as Jay is straightening up. 

He’s holding the eyeliner tube and staring Jay down, eyebrows up behind his bangs.

Jay can’t give him a vocal answer, throat blocked up by the tears he didn’t get the chance to shed. Instead, he twists around and moves the pillows onto the freed half of the bed, revealing the rest of the stash: lipstick, gloss, glitter that sparkles even under their shitty lamp’s light, mascara, and several more tubes of eyeliner.

Tim continues to be silent, looking over the collection, appraising it until he shakes his head and flicks the eyeliner at Jay, striking him in the chest.

“Why didn’t you fucking say so? God, you’re…”

He climbs to his feet, mussing his hair with shaking hands as he laughs, not a single derisive note to his breathless chuckling. Jay breathes freely at last, taking one of the pillows and holding it to his chest. 

“You… don’t mind?”

“God, no, not really, no,” Tim huffs, seating himself at the edge of the bed, elbows at his knees. He hunches over, clawing through his hair even more. “I-- it really could be worse. Gotta be honest, I’m only worried about how much money had to go towards this stuff.”

Heat creeps up Jay’s neck, adding to whatever color he didn’t manage to wipe off his face. He crawls his way down the bed, joining Tim at his side and shaking his head.

“It’s all free samples. W-when you visit that indie makeup shop down by where you work, they give you a tiny all natural sample and… I’ve been collecting.”

Tim snorts, reaching behind them and grabbing a compact full of starry purple powder.

“Smart.”

They fall silent again, though this time it’s a comfortable silence, reminding Jay of the exhausted but sated quiet that comes after a long group laugh. He grins to himself, watching Tim play with the compact, turning it over and over and clicking it open and shut.

He eventually plops it back in Jay’s lap and angles himself so that his face is easier to access, back to the wall and legs crossed.

“Alright. If you’re going to be playing around and experimenting, I might as well too.”

Jay’s insides bubble joyfully and he holds the compact to his heart.

“For real?”

“Sure, I’m secure in my masculinity,” Tim smirks, shrugging his shoulders. “Besides, you never know how pretty you’ll look until you actually go on and try it, huh?”

Jay barely nods, a bit dizzy with emotional whiplash. 

He’s never applied makeup to anyone’s face besides his own. But he guesses there’s a first time for everything.

And as he inches closer and holds Tim’s chin with one hand to keep him steady, he finds he wouldn’t want it to be anybody else’s face.


End file.
